Now we’re going to take a step back and contextualize these scrapbooks, and 1924 as a whole with our friend Chris Burns, Archivist and Interim Director at the UVM Silver Special Collections Library.

We want to see what life was like then, to better understand it now.

So, what was America like in the 1920s? Or Vermont? And most importantly, as regards the interests of this project, what was UVM like?

"It’s a really interesting era to compare with our own, right?" says Chris Burns.

 "Because in some respects, we’re coming out of a similar kind of world – worldwide traumatic events, in terms of our COVID pandemic and where our students were at -- in terms back then – of coming out of World War I and the Spanish Flu, which was the last sort of global pandemic at that scale. So, you know, I think people are adjusting again to what life is like again."

America During the Roaring 20s

America in the 1920s was booming. Hemlines came up, short hair was in. Smoking was seen as a sign of independence. The economy was roaring – and so were the parties.

Until the economic crash of 1929 that would spawn the Great Depression, the roaring twenties presented us with abundance and fast-paced change.

Automobiles were on the rise, with Henry Ford and his Model T. Still, most Vermonters relied on trains, horses, and carriages. Vermont roads were largely dirt.

Students at UVM had the unique advantage of being close to the Canadian border. The few students with access to a car could hop over to Gallagher’s and have beer with dinner. Which would’ve been illegal on the Vermont side.

Campus looked different too. A lot more fields, dirt roads. A lot less buildings. A lot less students, too.

UVM Then and Now

In terms of enrollment, in the academic year from 1923 to 1924, UVM had 691 male and 469 female students, for a total of 1,160. That number climbed up to 1,687 if you included the summer term. Compare that to the 13,550 in the 2023-24 academic year.

The 1924 class came from 14 US states, primarily from Vermont, New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, but on campus at the time were also 3 international students: Goodwin Lee '28 from Hongkong, China; George Wilkinson, Cl. '24, from Grand Falls, Newfoundland; and Santiago Ernesto Duque '26 from Panama, R.P.

The current graduating class hails from all 50 states and 77 countries outside the US and is predominantly female identifying.

Women, Radio, and A Vermonter as American President

Women became more prominent on campus beginning around World War I. With men overseas, women held down the home front – and some enrolled in college. With that came an increase in teacher certification programs as well as majors that aligned with gender norms, like home economics and secretarial studies.

"And there’s this paternalistic streak," notes Burns of the era, "of them needing more protection. So, you know, I think you see Grasse Mount as, as part of the women’s campus at first and then you start to see ... by the Buell Estate, which becomes Redstone, and then Redstone becomes the women’s campus, right, in the early twenties [...] So, you have a women’s campus where they were living and they were dining."

While the men were gone, women had a chance to re-evaluate their roles in society. With the suffragette movement, white women gained the right to vote in 1920.

1920 is also the year the nation heard its first commercial broadcast, conducted by Pittsburgh-based station KDKA.

In 1921, Edna Beard becomes Vermont’s first woman to serve as legislator, holding seat 146 in the House of Representatives.

But she wasn’t the only Vermonter making headlines. On August 3^rd, 1923, Calvin Coolidge, then Vice-President of the United States, was awakened in the night at his Plymouth family home and vested as the country’s 30^th President of the United States, following the death of Warren G. Harding. Coolidge’s own father, a notary public, administered his son’s oath into office.

Images (L to R): The Coolidges at the White House | Photo courtesy Vermont Historical Society; Aerial views of Plymouth Notch, Calvin Coolidge's Vermont childhood home | Photo courtesy Vermont History Explorer.

Guy Bailey, Eugenics, and Kake Walk

At that time, Guy Bailey was only in year 3 out of his eventual 20 years serving as President of UVM.

"Guy Bailey himself has a pretty complex history at UVM," says Burns.

"And we didn’t talk about it, sort of, you know, this being the era of the Eugenics Survey really coming into its own and, being very well supported by UVM and Bailey’s role in that and Henry Perkin’s role in that. But… I think that’s become one of the ways people think about Guy Bailey now."

"A different side of Guy Bailey was – there are lots of stories about his kind of support for students and sometimes real financial support," adds Burns.

The students of 1924 were tremendously supportive of Guy Bailey; he worked hard to bring in scholarships.

But after his death in office in 1940, it became clear he’d left the University in a financial deficit of about half a million dollars.

He’d also further the efforts of Professor Henry Perkins and Perkin’s Vermont Eugenics Survey, which held white supremacy at the core.

White supremacy was rampant across the nation at the time. With the 1915 film Birth of a Nation, the Ku Klux Klan experienced a second wave – and recruited across the country, including in Vermont. Prohibition helped the KKK thrive.

"Prohibition is big in this period – 1920, the federal Prohibition passes," notes Chris Burns. "Vermont had had a longer history with prohibition, but it was sort of more local option at that point, which meant towns could make their own decisions on Prohibition."

The KKK positioned themselves as an extension of the law. They targeted Catholic, Black, and immigrant communities in the name of enforcing Prohibition as a vigilante police group. Like eugenics sought to purify the gene pool, the KKK’s aim was to ‘purify’ the country of minorities and immigrants.

Racism shows up on campus, too.

The highlight of the Winter Festival until the late 1960s was a gathering called Kake Walk, a tradition lasting 73 years at UVM. It featured minstrel shows that perpetuated racial stereotypes, including blackface and satin tuxedos, all of which caused staggering harm.

But -- there were also some good things happening at the time.

In 1924, UVM’s College of Medicine graduates Dorothy Lang, the first woman to earn her MD and a native Vermonter.

Just 6 years later in in 1930, Edna Hall Brown becomes the first recorded Black woman to graduate from UVM. She received her Bachelor of Science in Education. Nearly 100 years after its first Black graduate, Andrew Harris, who graduated in 1838.

A Common Thread

"As much as things have changed quite a bit since then," Burns adds, "there is so much that’s, that’s really still kind of common to a student experience.

You’re still kind of taking that next leap in your life. You know, you’re learning all these big ideas. The curriculum certainly changed, but quite a lot of it is pretty similar.

So, just getting exposure to a range of ideas and helping students figure out what they want to do next in life – that piece feels very similar as well as, you know, other maybe, the particular social activities have changed a little bit.

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Thanks for following along. Up next, we’ll be talking all things food and dining on campus!

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